Memorial Day weekend gets a lot of attention as the unofficial start of summer in Hampton Roads. The Oceanfront fills up. The grills come out. The bridge-tunnel traffic backs up. For most families, it’s the kickoff to vacation season. For people who work in injury law, it’s the start of something else entirely.
Researchers and traffic safety groups call the stretch between Memorial Day and Labor Day the “100 Deadliest Days.” The name isn’t dramatic. It comes straight from the crash data. According to a AAA Foundation review of NHTSA data, more than 30 percent of all annual teen-driver-related deaths happen during these roughly 14 weeks. Between 2019 and 2023, 13,135 people died nationwide in crashes involving a teen driver. Over 4,000 of them died during this single window each year. On an average summer day, eight people are killed in a teen-involved crash, compared to seven during the rest of the year.
The numbers aren’t only about teens. Across the country, summer driving deaths run higher than any other season for almost every age group. Our Virginia Beach personal injury lawyers see the local version of this every year and know the patterns. They start the Friday before Memorial Day and don’t really let up until the kids go back to school.
What Makes Memorial Day Weekend So Risky
The National Safety Council estimated 443 traffic deaths during the 2025 Memorial Day holiday period alone, which ran from 6 p.m. Friday, May 23, through 11:59 p.m. Monday, May 26. Alcohol-impaired drivers accounted for 39 percent of fatal Memorial Day crashes in 2023, compared to 30 percent of fatal crashes on a typical day.
Hampton Roads gets a concentrated version of this. The Oceanfront pulls in tourists from across Virginia, North Carolina, and farther up the East Coast. The Outer Banks crowd cuts through the area on Route 168 and Route 17. The Eastern Shore traffic moves north and south on Route 13. The HRBT becomes a parking lot on Friday afternoon. By Saturday night, the combination of road-tired drivers, holiday drinking, and roads packed with people who don’t know the area creates exactly the conditions where bad crashes happen.
Some of what drives the increase:
- Higher overall traffic volume, which raises everyone’s exposure to risk
- More alcohol consumption at gatherings, cookouts, and Oceanfront events
- Long drives by people who didn’t get enough sleep before leaving
- Unfamiliar drivers using roads they don’t normally use
- Heavier motorcycle traffic, since the season is in full swing
- More pedestrians at the Oceanfront, Sandbridge, and along the boardwalk
Why the Whole Summer Stays Dangerous
Memorial Day kicks it off, but the danger doesn’t stop on Tuesday. The reason summer is harder on drivers comes down to a few factors that persist from late May until Labor Day.
Teen drivers are a big piece of it. School lets out, and suddenly, inexperienced drivers are on the road at all hours, often carrying other teens as passengers. NHTSA research shows that the fatal crash risk for a teen driver increases with every additional teen passenger in the car. Nearly six out of ten teen crashes involve some kind of distraction. Almost 30 percent of fatal teen crashes involve speeding. Sixteen and seventeen-year-old drivers are nearly three times more likely than adults to be involved in a fatal crash.
Construction season is another piece. State and local road work schedules cluster heavily in the summer months, when the weather cooperates. That means more lane shifts, more flaggers, more uneven pavement, and more confused drivers approaching unfamiliar setups at highway speed. In a region with as much ongoing transportation work as Hampton Roads, summer construction zones are everywhere.
Vacation fatigue plays in, too. Families pile into the car at 4 a.m. to beat the bridge-tunnel traffic. People drive twelve hours from Pennsylvania or New York to get to Sandbridge. Researchers have found that staying awake for 20 hours produces impairment roughly equivalent to driving at the legal alcohol limit. Plenty of summer drivers cross that line without realizing it.
Then there’s the alcohol piece, which doesn’t taper off after Memorial Day. Beach gatherings, July 4th, weekend cookouts, late-night events at the Oceanfront, all of it adds up. Even small amounts of alcohol slow reaction times and impair the judgment calls drivers need to make in heavy traffic.
What Drivers Can Actually Do
Awareness campaigns are useful, but they only work if drivers change their behavior.
- Build extra time into every trip. Heavy traffic is a fact of summer in this region. Trying to make up time is what causes drivers to speed, follow too closely, and run yellow lights.
- Don’t drive tired. If a trip needs an early start, plan for it the night before. If fatigue hits mid-drive, pull off at a rest stop or grab coffee.
- Buckle every passenger every time. Seat belts are still the single most effective safety device in a vehicle, and the National Safety Council estimated 159 lives would be saved by belt use during the 2025 Memorial Day weekend alone.
- Don’t drink and drive, even after one or two. Use a rideshare, a designated driver, or stay where you are.
- Put the phone down. Virginia has banned holding a phone while driving since 2021. The law applies regardless of whether it is a holiday weekend.
- For parents of teens, have the conversation early in the summer. Set rules about passengers, curfews, phones, and where teens can drive.
What Happens After a Crash in Virginia
Crashes still happen, no matter how careful people are. When they do in Virginia, the legal system doesn’t always make things easy for the people who got hurt. The state still uses contributory negligence, an older rule that has been rejected in most of the country. Under contributory negligence, if you’re found even one percent at fault for the crash, you can’t recover anything from the other driver.
Insurance defense lawyers know this and use it. They’ll argue that the injured person was speeding by a few miles per hour, was slow to brake, took their eyes off the road for a moment, or didn’t see what they should have seen. Most of those arguments don’t actually defeat a strong case, but they create leverage to pressure low settlements.
Drunk driving cases have some built-in advantages for victims. Virginia Code Section 8.01-418 allows a drunk driver’s guilty plea in criminal court to be used as evidence of negligence in the civil case. If the driver had a BAC of 0.15 or higher, or refused breath or blood testing, the law presumes their conduct was willful and wanton, which opens the door to punitive damages in addition to regular compensation. Those damages are generally capped at $350,000, but they can substantially increase what a victim recovers.
Call Our Virginia Beach Car Accident Lawyers
If you or someone you love was hurt in a crash this Memorial Day weekend or during any part of the summer, contact a Virginia Beach car accident lawyer at Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp to schedule a free consultation. Our attorneys have recovered more than $100 million in settlements and verdicts for injured clients, including a $2.86 million settlement for a highway worker who lost both legs after being struck by a drunk driver on Interstate 264 in Norfolk.
Call Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp at 833-997-1774 for a free consultation about your case. Our firm has offices in Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Norfolk, and Chesapeake, and we represent injured people across Hampton Roads.